


funambulism

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Circus, Dick Grayson is Renegade, Gen, M/M, unbetaed, very light on shipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28230840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: Talia has one last teacher before she funds Jason to return to Gotham, and that teacher has only one thing to teach him.Or that's what Jason thinks.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Comments: 43
Kudos: 197





	funambulism

Jason does not want to be here.

 _Here_ is a big top circus is Azerbaijan, in some shitty town in the middle of nowhere. Talia brought him him here, after picking him up from the latest teacher whose life he trashed. “Please stop tormenting the people I ask to train you,” she had asked him, and he had replied, sharply, “Stop outsourcing my training.”

Apparently, his request goes unheeded and unnoticed. She meets him just outside the circus; it’s an old relic of a Soviet past, and it’s seen better days. “The Soviets like the circus,” Talia tells him, as she ushers him past the tents, towards the main one. “It was entertainment for the people.”

“The Soviets fell before I was born,” he points out, raising his eyebrows at her, and she shrugs, but he knows what she’s trying to say. This might be an old Soviet relic, but the people here are having a good time. There are kids laughing, old grandmothers nudging their children along. “What kind of training am I supposed to get at a circus, anyway?”

“It’s not the circus. This is just where he likes to be. He was a hard man to pin down,” she explains, and then they’re finding seats. 

There’s an old mercenary - Jason can tell by the way he’s sitting - just in front of them. His hair is salt and pepper steel; there’s a nasty scar down the side of his face. He has that look of Russian dominance to him, like maybe his parents were the victims of some mass transportation. 

That must be him.

When Talia told him to meet her in Ganja for his next instructor, Jason thought that this had to be it. He’s almost nineteen, if you don’t count the six months he was in the ground (Jason doesn’t), and he’s so tired of waiting. Of another day that he goes unthought of, unavenged, another day where someone else is wearing his colors. Another day where the man who killed him is still breathing.

But Talia has always been clear. _You’re not ready_ , and maybe the thing of is that Jason understands that. She’s right. He’s not. She knows them all, she’s sat over this entire thing like a fat spider over a web, and she knows all the local flies. 

But still he argued, he said he was going, and she finally dangled it like a lure. _This is the last one,_ she promised _and then I’ll fund everything_.

Jason knows he can get money. Money isn’t really what this is about. That’s not the kind of funding that he needs; it’s connections, it’s the reliability of goods, it’s keeping people who might think to interfere off his back. There’s the easy way, and the hard way, and when a task is almost impossible, every bit of extra _easy way_ might be the difference between failing and succeeding.

So here he is, sitting behind a ex-Soviet mercenary. Talia all but confirms it by leaning down, and putting an envelope in the man’s hands. He looks back and smiles at Talia, and Jason is about to stand up when Talia presses him to sit. “Wait,” she tells him.

The mercenary looks up pointedly, and the show begins. Jason remembers, once, going to the circus as a kid. Willis took him, and it was magic. It was the first time he realized that people could fly, really fly, like birds. After that, he hadn’t gone again, but it hadn’t mattered. He learned to fly, too.

The spotlight goes on the trapeze, and the ringmaster is saying something in Azerbaijani, a language that Jason is pathetically unfamiliar with, as the man on the trapeze is practically cut free from his platform.

The next ten minutes, Jason doesn’t think he breathes once.

He has never seen _anyone_ move like that - an impressive thing, because Jason has seen real superheroes, because Jason knows - knew - Wonder Woman and Superman. But the man on the trapeze flips and flies like gravity was a suggestion he decided to ignore, and he does it with a smile. A laugh. Everyone is laughing, and smiling, and Jason is sitting there holding his breath and wishing he could fly like that.

When the act stops, Jason is staring at the area where the trapeze is. The clowns are coming out, children are laughing and clapping, but Jason is just left _staring_. What the fuck. What the fuck was that?

He looks over at Talia, and she looks smug as hell. “Come then,” the mercenary in front of them says, “I will take you to him.”

“What?” Jason asks, shocked, as if he’s still not sure where he is. He thinks - is surprised - to remember his whole life up until this moment. It’s a real fucking shock to the system. He thinks, where’s _dad_ , and it’s a punch to the center of him. Christ almighty. 

Talia is standing up and picking her way through families, and Jason is suddenly barreling after. The lingering residue of his childhood, sticky against his frontal lobe, is already receding. “Isn’t this my teacher?” he asks, petulant. He does not want to be here any longer. He hopes he never has to see another person on a trapeze again; he never wants to deal with the thought of _where’s dad_. 

“No,” Talia says, and they come to a small caravan, made of battered tin and looking distinctly well-traveled. The mercenary - apparently not his teacher - knocks twice.

Jason can already hear someone on the other side. “No,” he hears, a man’s voice, a low tenor, maybe, not impressively deep but distinctly masculine, “no, Slade, I told you, I’m not going. Yes, they’re paying me, who do you think I-” he hears the door open, and Talia steps in first as the conversation keeps going. “-yes. Yes. _Yes_ , I know, okay, look, I have to go, Talia’s here,” he hears, because he can’t see inside.

Then Talia moves as someone - the man - puts his arms around her. “Hey! Where’s the little man, did you bring him too?”

Jason steps inside just in time to hear Talia reply “No, his training could not be neglected even for your circus,” she says, oddly well-humored, and then Jason finally sees him. The man on the trapeze, only close up and in person he’s _offensively_ attractive. He has a sweep of black hair over his forehead, and wide, beautiful blue eyes. Blue like the sea.

He’s still in his trapeze getup. Jason thinks he’s swallowed his own tongue. “Is this him?” the man asks, looking him over. “He’s a lot...more than I expected.”

“What?” Jason snaps, his tongue mysteriously un-swallowed, now. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Talia steps in, smoothly. “Jason,” she says, but she’s not talking to Jason. She’s introducing him. “This is Jason Todd. I gave the money to your man,” she assures him.

Jason raises his chin. The other man snorts. “Jason,” he says. “ _Jason Todd_ ,” he repeats, in a slightly cruel way. “You must be some commodity, if Talia is willing to come all the way here to pay me to teach you to walk the wire.”

“Are you joking?” he asks. “Talia, are you kidding me?”

But Talia is already squeezing out the door. “I will come get you. Do not kill this one,” she says.

“As if he could,” the man retorts, and suddenly it’s just the two of them. The man sits on the very narrow bunk - there’s only one bed, and it definitely wouldn’t fit Jason, that’s always a good sign - and looks up at him. “You couldn’t, you know. Don’t try.”

“Did she really bring me here to learn how to be a circus clown?” he asks, feeling the bristle of impatience against his spine. What the hell?

The man laughs. “You wish you could be a clown,” he says lifting one leg and leaning back into the bunk. “She brought you here, presumably, to learn what I know. Or so I could teach you what I can, so you can go back to Gotham and...kill Batman?”

He says it like it’s a joke. He says it like it’s a stupid, childish thing. “What do you know about it? You’re a-” he starts, and suddenly he’s on the ground.

He didn’t see it coming.

What the _hell_.

It was so fast that he’s on the floor of the trailer, and he registers that before the starburst of pain at the _back of his head_. The man has his weight on him. He can’t possibly weigh enough to keep Jason down, only he has him pinned in a way that takes advantage of every possible bit of leverage that he might have. “Don’t,” the man says, the affable smile and the brightness of the trapeze still on his face. His eyes are still that impossible blue, but now there’s no warmth behind them, “finish that statement.”

Jason grunts. Keeps his mouth shut. The man stares at him, calm, but then gets up. “You can call me Renegade,” he says, and he stands up. “We’ll go find you a place to sleep, and we’ll start tomorrow.”

Jason doesn’t know what they’ll start tomorrow, but it doesn’t matter. He knows to shoot a man, to build a bomb, to cut off a person’s head, but apparently he still doesn’t know how to not underestimate someone who Talia says will teach him. He has enough in the way of humility to keep his mouth shut as he stands, his face burning, shame coiled in his lungs.

He follows like an obedient dog. Renegade takes him to a caravan that makes the first one look like a mansion; all it has, practically, is a bed and a cramped pit for a toilet. But the cot that will not fit Jason’s bulk has sheets that look and smell clean on them, so he won’t be fussy. Renegade gives him a minute. “Dinner after the show ends, you can eat with us, or you can just not. I don’t care, but I’d rather you didn’t die, because Talia only gave me fifty percent up front.”

Jason nods. He’s not a snob, and this is a circus, for all that the trapeze is performed by a crazy person. “Don’t talk to the performers, though. Don’t distract them. I told them you were an idiot, and that they wouldn’t worry about talking to you,” he tells him, “but if I catch wind of you talking to them, I’ll cut you loose.”

It’s an easy rule to follow; Jason doesn’t have any interest in talking to the people who live in this circus. He nods again.

Renegade seems satisfied by this. “Okay. Glad to see we understand each other.”

Jason takes a moment. “Is Slade Wilson your boss?” he asks, then, tipping his head. He heard the name, he knows the name. Slade Wilson is a machine, that’s the rumor on the street. He never came to Gotham when Jason was Robin, but that doesn’t mean that he hadn’t heard, even then. And then later, after, Talia spoke about him sparingly enough that Jason knew he had to be dangerous. Slade Wilson. _Deathstroke_.

Renegade’s lips twitch a bit. “No,” he says, “though he probably would agree with that assessment. He used to be my partner,” he says, easily.

“I’ve never heard of you,” Jason tells him, not to be a smartass, but to let him know. If his goal had been to stay under the radar, then he succeeded.

Renegade looks a little surprised, but then he shakes his head. “Sure you have,” he tells him. “You’ll figure it out,” he tells him with a smile, that charming, trapeze smile. “I’ll see you in the morning, _Jason Todd_.”

Jason scowls, but lets the door close.

~~~~~

As promised, he doesn’t see Renegade again until morning. Dawn comes and goes but there’s no slamming door and no shaking trailer and no summons, so Jason goes through his stretches as he waits. He goes to get breakfast; everyone gives him a wide berth, which is just fine with Jason. He eats. He reads. He does a bunch of push ups.

 _Morning_ , as it turns out, is almost eleven am, when Renegade comes out of his trailer. “Fuck,” he says, eloquently, when he sees Jason sitting on the ground. Jason shrugs. “Fuck,” he says again, and rubs his head. “Okay,” he says. “Go...I don’t know. Go run for an hour. You need to warm up anyway.”

Jason is too confused to be truly offended. This? This is what Talia is delaying his return to Gotham for? This guy? Last night he thought _I shouldn’t underestimate him_ but now Jason is thinking maybe he had the right idea. Maybe he should just bolt, fuck Talia’s assistance. She might help him anyway.

He runs. He must go about ten miles, and when he gets back, Renegade is sitting in the door of his trailer, drinking his coffee. He doesn’t look like the performer from last night. In the light of day, his skin looks darker, his hair looks shinier, and he looks more human. His eyes are still that unbearable bright blue. He’s wearing a pair of leggings and a shirt with colors that clash so loudly it should be illegal. 

He looks like a tool. 

He throws Jason a pair of shoes; leather and soft, like slippers. “Come on,” he says, “We’re starting with the wire.”

Jason follows after he puts his shoes on, and Renegade leads him to a tent. There are already a pair of acrobats there, working on some stunt involving a ring and a ball, but Renegade doesn’t look at them and so Jason ignores them too. Instead they head to where there’s a tightrope strung up about three feet off the ground.

Jason feels vaguely insulted. “Okay,” Renegade says. “Up you go. I want to see what I’m working with.”

Right.

Tightropes are not Jason’s strong suit. When he was Robin, Bruce made him train them, and he could do a passable job. He could walk one without a lot of wobble, he could get from point a to point b, and that’s all he needed. But he was also two feet shorter and at least 150 pounds lighter, back then.

Still.

He gets up on the platform and the wire seems-

-thinner than he remembers Bruce training him with. 

He looks at Renegade. Renegade looks at him. He looks at the acrobats, who are conspicuously not looking at him, which makes him think that they are waiting to see the giant topple. Great.

He takes a breath and tries to remember what he knew at twelve years old.

The second his foot goes on the wire, he feels his balance go off and he realizes how truly fucking hard this is. But he takes a step, and then another. He is a highly trained killer, and he’s not going to fuck this up now. He takes another step and wobbles, his arms going out automatically to help him balance. Shit.

It’s not a long wire. Maybe ten, twelve feet long. But every second feels like it’s stretching out to an hour and every inch of the wire feels longer.

He’s only about halfway across when he loses his balance and hops down to the ground.

Renegade looks amused. “Okay,” he says, almost laughing. “You suck, but not as badly as I thought you would.”

The acrobats are giggling now, one of them doing an exaggerated overbalance motion, crossing her eyes as she does it. Did Jason cross his eyes? Shit, probably. “Again,” Renegade says. 

He goes again.

And again.

And again.

Every time he loses his balance, Renegade just laughs, or smiles. He’s doing handstands, walking on his hands, playing with the acrobats, tossing them in the air. This is clearly a day in the park for him, while Jason gets more and more frustrated, while Jason falls, over and over and over.

“Hey!” Jason snaps, finally, the irritation of falling and watching this idiot just joke around and not teach him anything finally getting to him. “Are you going to tell me what I’m doing wrong, or are you just collecting Talia’s money after watching me fall?”

Renegade stops what he’s doing, which is standing on top of one of the enormous balls that the acrobats had been playing with. He was, up until then, just walking it around the tent. That, that Jason could do. “Maybe,” Renegade admits, but then his smile gets toothsome.  


“Is this how Deathstroke trained you? In a circus?”

“No, Slade hates the circus,” Renegade says, and some of that ease and good humor is falling off him. The acrobats are watching, now, and they’re beginning to clear out. Not in a hurry, but in a way that suggests they know what’s coming next. 

Jason turns, not on the wire anymore, but on the ground. They’re about ten feet apart, but that’s nothing in their world, and they both know it. “Then how did he train you? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to learn?”

“You want to know how he trained me?” Renegade asks, and his voice turns a little deep. Jason’s eyes narrow, and suddenly Renegade is there, slapping him on the mouth.

At least.

In theory, he’s slapping him on the mouth.

It’s open handed, the kind of slap that Jason used to see on soap operas on TV. Except that this slap has the intentionality of true pain behind it. It’s a slap that Jason both didn’t see coming (how is he so _fast_?) and that knocks him over on his ass. And it’s embarrassing, because it has the sting of a slap but none of the power of a punch.

He’s about to get up, when Renegade’s foot - in one of those ridiculous leather shoes, the sole supple to feel the shape of the wire beneath it - is on his head. “Don’t get up unless you’re ready to know your place, boy,” he says, with a growl.

“Rene-” he starts.

“Master,” Renegade corrects. 

Jason stays still as he feels the pressure on his head increase, pound by pound. It doesn’t actually take all that much to pop a human skull. Jason knows that, because one of his teachers taught it to him. 

Still.

He’s not calling him master. He keeps his mouth shut, even as the pressure mounts. Jason can hear the blood in his ears. His arms are free, but there is something in him - maybe some form of self-preservation? - that knows if he moves them, Renegade will just kill him. 

“You know what you’re feeling now? That fear? The one that’s rushing through your head, because you know you can fight me, but if you do I’ll just kill you and leave you body in a ditch?” Renegade asks, the curve of his foot in that tender space between Jason’s neck and Jason’s jaw. Jason doesn’t say anything. “Speak up,” Renegade insists.

“I’ve been dead before,” Jason snarls, baring his teeth. “You don’t scare me!” He lies, and he doesn’t know why, but it is a lie. There is something about Renegade that is terrifying, and he can’t put his finger on it.

The pressure increases. “You can’t lie to me,” Renegade says. “I know you’re afraid.”

There is a long moment. Jason thinks he hears the groan of his skull. He thinks he sees the crash of a crowbar against his hands his hips, his ribs. His head. He has never remembered his death so clearly.

He breathes in.

He breathes out.

“Yes,” Jason admits, finally.

“That’s how _Deathstroke_ trained me. With that fear,” Renegade says. 

And then his foot isn’t on Jason’s neck anymore. 

“I’m not going to train you that way,” Renegade says. There is a mysterious, strange softness in his voice, now.

Jason doesn’t get up. 

“Why am I here?” Jason finally asks. Dust and grime gets in his teeth. He doesn’t care. It’s already in his eyes. “What are you trying to teach me?”

Renegade is back on the ball; his time he’s sitting on it, his legs gently curved under. “To walk the wire, little bird. Get up. Go to it.”

Little bird, he says. Jason makes a face, his nose scrunching up with distaste. Little bird. Fuck him.

This time, when Jason gets up, when he sets his foot on the wire, Renegade stops him. “The wire isn’t in front of you. It’s inside you. Straight up, straight through. Right to the sky. As long as that’s where it stays, you won’t fall.”

This man had his foot on Jason’s head not _thirty seconds ago_ , and now he’s talking platitudes. Jason just stares at him, and Renegade gives a sigh. He gets up, goes to the wire, and hops on. “Straight up,” he says, and walks it like he’s strolling through the fucking park. His hands are in his _pockets_.

He walks forward. Then backward. Then, because he actually is an asshole, he does a handstand and walks the wire on his hands, which feels like it should be impossible. He tumbles. He performs a whole fucking show, while Jason is standing there on the other platform like a joke, one foot delicately placed on the wire.

And then Renegade is done showing off. He’s back on the platform, this time on his ass, his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. “Like that,” he says, brightly. “Do you want to try again?”

Jason tries again.

And falls.

~~~~~~

He watches Renegade flirt, sitting on top of his own little camper. The woman is older than he is, probably by a couple of years, but maybe more. She’s not a member of the circus. He watches as Renegade dances with her, using that preternatural grace to spin her. Jason is starting to think that he’s a metahuman. No real person is that elegant.

He watches as they spin, and then it happens.

It’s so fast that Jason thinks he might have dreamed it. But then it happens again, that tilt of his head, the way his lips draw up, the way his fingers spread against her back. Normal people wouldn’t have noticed it, but Jason isn’t and has never been normal. The way that Renegade is smiling at her-

-it’s _Bruce_ , he realizes. Bruce at a gala that he wasn’t really interested in, dancing with a woman who he was seducing for whatever reason. That playboy attitude. He was always very strict about letting the women he slept with meet Jason, not because he was ashamed of Jason, he said.

Alfred said it wasn’t Jason. It was the other way around. Bruce was ashamed of Brucie, and of everything that it meant to be in order to be him. Proud of Jason, he didn’t want their lives to touch.

Jason isn’t really sure about that anymore. When he was 13, it was obvious. Now? 

It doesn’t matter.

The way that Renegade spins her, there’s falseness there that he couldn’t have just invented. That delicate, insincere touch, that lie with his body, it’s something you learn. Who is this guy? It’s so methodical.

He watches Renegade flirt, and he watches the woman melt, until she lets him kiss her, and then Jason comes down from his camper. He doesn’t need to see someone lie a woman into their bed. He’s 18 years old, and he’s too fucking horny already, hormones practically burning their way through him. He’s blessed that the age of stiff-breeze hard ons is past, but there is something-

-he goes into his camper and ignores it.

~~~~~

The circus moves and Jason moves with it, because the wire is his enemy. His feet are sore all the time, and he hates how he watches the children learn to walk to the wire with such easy grace. It’s not fearlessness.

“They’re short and skinny,” Renegade says. “Men like you almost never go on the wire. You’re practically designed to be a strongman,” he says with a laugh, as Jason wobbles over the entire thing and hops to the other platform with a frown. 

“I’m not designed to be in the circus,” Jason replies. “I’m only here-”

“Because Talia’s footing the bill, I know,” Renegade interrupts, casually. “Do you want to go up the trapeze?”

It’s the first time in the few weeks that Jason’s been here that he’s gotten that offer, and the truth is that he kind of wants to say yes. He sees the trapeze go, and he remembers when he was a kid, and Bruce taught him to fly. He remembers the first time he saw Renegade, tipping and twirling. 

He gets up on the platform. “Really?” he asks, and he tries not to sound too excited about it. Renegade has been perplexingly nice; he hasn’t stepped on Jason’s neck since that first time, and hasn’t beaten the crap out of him yet. 

“Sure. Climb up,” Renegade says.

Jason goes up, and he sees Renegade shoo the kids out of the tent. That’s not surprising. Renegade doesn’t like having the kids around when he’s doing anything where he can’t keep an eye on them. 

And then Renegade is behind him, that long lean body pressed up against Jason once they’re both on the high trapeze platform. It’s a long way down - there’s no net. Renegade doesn’t work with one, and Jason knows he shouldn’t ask why.

Renegade releases one of the trapezes from the hook, and puts it in Jason’s hands, but he’s still pressed up against him. “My parents taught me this,” he says. “How to fly. Hands tight, no tricks.”

He pushes.

The first flight almost feels like Gotham. Almost. The light is too bright - it’s daylight - and the cold is too crisp - Gotham is always so damp - but the sensation is just the same. He swings in an arc and he thinks he’s smiling.

He comes back and Renegade catches him by the hips in a move that looks practiced, well-rehearsed. Giddiness erupts in the core of his stomach; he _remembers_ that magic. “Don’t you look bright,” Renegade says, his smile wide, the blue of his eyes almost startling.

Jason laughs; it’s such a surprise that he laughs _again_. He looks at Renegade. “Can I go again?” he asks.

Renegade’s smile doesn’t falter. “Sure. Hold on,” he says, and lets Jason go. This time Jason tries a flip. The first one goes fine, but the second one makes him scrabble. There’s no net, and despite that he’s not afraid of falling, but-

-but then Renegade has him by the forearms, and in an instinct from when he was Robin, he grips back. Renegade uses their momentum to bring them back to the platform. “Precocious,” he says, setting Jason down.

“You could have let me fall,” Jason says casually. It’s not meant to be dismissive, but he ducks his head and doesn’t know how to express that. The only person who ever caught him before was Bruce, who was always there, until he wasn’t.

Renegade’s eyebrows go up a little. “No I couldn’t, little bird,” he says, and ruffles Jason’s curls before he starts climbing down. “Back to the wire!”

Jason stays there on the platform for a while, and then he calls out, “Thank you,” belatedly. Renegade lifts one hand, casually. 

~~~~

That’s the turning point in their relationship. Renegade is friendlier, then, warmer. He lets Jason eat with the performers. He ribs Jason, teases him until he smiles, about things like his weight and his height and the impossibility of being in a circus when your first high-wire lesson is when he’s _too old_. Renegade suggests a carnival barker. A fortune teller. Jason dumps sour tea leaves on the table and tells Renegade he’s going to meet a rich woman and run away from the circus, and Renegade laughs.

That Renegade who almost smashed his head in might still be there, lingering behind those smiles, but it’s so foreign that maybe, for a minute, Jason thinks he doesn’t have to worry about it. Certainly Renegade isn’t like his other teachers. He’s nicer to him, for starters. Doesn’t try to kill him. All he wants is for Jason to manage to walk ten feet on a wire.

The circus moves again, this time crossing the border from Azerbaijan into Georgia. Jason has fake papers, but it turns out they don’t need them; the circus’ manager gets them through with a smile, an oily handshake, and a ream of papers so thick that Jason must get lost in the shuffle. 

He loses track of time, a little. His whole world starts to boil down to the rope, as if nothing else exists. It doesn’t help that Renegade’s advice is just that - stop worrying about the world and focus on the rope. On the wire. On being a straight line, from earth to heaven.

If he had done exactly that, he wouldn’t have noticed the day that Renegade took a call in the middle of a lesson. As it stands, he almost does miss it; Renegade turns and is just outside of the tent, and then Jason is falling off. It’s that fall that makes Renegade turn, and Jason is on his ass, which happens eleven or twelve times a day, and Renegade’s face has lost that smile.

Jason looks at him, eyebrows up. “Everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” Renegade says, pocketing his phone. “Take a break today.”

Jason shouldn’t want that. He shouldn’t want to take a break: he has revenge to get to, he has a clown whose death he has to arrange. It strikes him that he doesn’t even want to really be here, suddenly, that he’s been distracted by stupid things, like the trapeze and laughing and the way that Renegade smiles when Jason says something particularly dumb. 

But he nods, and realizes, too, without Renegade around he has nothing to do. Which is why about an hour into his break, he goes looking, only to catch a glimpse of the old Russian mercenary giving Renegade, in full blue and black armor that covers him from head to toe, a bike.

Jason watches as the mercenary unloads the bike from the back of the truck, and then clearly agrees to follow Renegade in it. 

It doesn’t take very long for Jason to make up his mind he’s going, too.

The truck is covered; it’s an old style suburban from the eighties, and so there’s plenty of space for Jason to hitch in the back without being seen. He waits for when the car goes, and hops on the back, clinging to the bumper in a way that he knows is insane, but if wasn’t as good as he was he wouldn’t last the ten or so miles into the city. 

He doesn’t know Tbilisi very well, but he doesn’t have to. Cities, at the heart of them, are relatively similar, and Jason cut his teeth on following dangerous men through cities. So once he’s far enough into the city, he starts following Renegade up above the city, through narrow alleys. 

Renegade moves like shadow.

He moves like shadow, and more than that, there’s something that itches in Jason’s head about the way he moves. Jason stays a distance from him, far enough away that with his hoodie up he might blend a bit into crowds or shift into a shadow. He watches Renegade find a rooftop and set up a sniper’s nest.

Jason finds a spot nearby on the ground, and they’re outside the state house. There is a party; it’s a gala. Jason stays, and watches, as people come and go, and the night stretches. And stretches.

It’s almost midnight when Renegade’s target comes out, and everything happens so fast and so smoothly that Jason thinks that if he blinked, he would have missed it. It’s a tranquilizer, he assumes, because the man staggers a bit and looks around like he was stung by something. Then in a matter of _seconds_ , Renegade is down off the nest, across the courtyard, and has the man in his arms and is carrying him away before the police or the army or the private guards can react.

Jason watches this happen, and he still thinks: there is something familiar about the way he moves. Even the violence has a measure of elegance, even though it’s stripped of performance, stripped of fun. It’s stripped of what makes Renegade interesting, when they’re sitting on the edge of the trapeze’s platform, nudging each other before he finally shows off some trick or some flight.

It’s so utterly utilitarian.

Jason takes a moment, and then he runs back to the circus. He gets back before Renegade does, which makes him think that Renegade probably met the client after he did the job. It works out; he goes to bed after he takes a quick, cold shower, and tries not to think about it.

It doesn’t work.

He lies in his cot, misery steaming into his bones, and stares up at the tin roof of his little camper. It’s not that he’s bothered by what was just a political assassination: that would be naive and stupid, considering he’s been trained by assassins before, and he’s aiming to have people killed. Considering he’s killed plenty. That’s not it at all.

It’s the way he moved. There were things that felt so familiar that it felt anchored into the pit of Jason’s stomach. Things that looked just too _right_. The way he dropped, the launch from a crouch, the run on his toes. There wasn’t the stamp of the League, Jason decides. It was something else.

He thinks back across his teachers. None of them moved like that. They were all confident, sure, unhesitating, but none of them moved like _that_. He thinks back to, shit, the other heroes he knew, he knows - Speedy, and the Flash, the fucking Green Lanterns, when suddenly he sits up.

 _He_ moves like that.

Jason moves like that. That drop, the way he braced himself, the particular heft of his hips and the fluidity. It wasn’t someone else. It was how _Bruce_ trained him. It was a _Robin_ thing.

_Renegade was Robin._

The thought pops into his head so fast and so unbelievably clear that Jason, for a moment, thinks that someone is in the camper with him and said it out loud. He thinks back, to the first Robin. He was, in Jason’s childhood, the hero to the children of Gotham. He was friendly and kind, bright, a beacon of _real hope_ , and he had only been around for maybe a year before suddenly he was gone. Gone for a long time, in Jason’s recollection. A few years, there was no Robin, and then Bruce found Jason and Jason had made him laugh after hitting him with a tire iron.

And Jason had asked. And Bruce didn’t tell him. Alfred said-

Alfred said, Jason remembers, keenly, that _Master Richard_ was a painful subject. That he had run away, when he was very young, and disappeared, after a fight with Bruce. Jason inherited his name and his colors, and the legacy. Master Richard, but Bruce called him _Dick._

Dick Grayson.

He was the thing that Jason had chased for a year before Bruce told him it was okay. That he didn’t need his partner to be Dick Grayson ever again. That he was his new partner, his son, that he didn’t-

-those thoughts hurt to approach, even from the side. So he sets that away. He gets up, feeling like he’s been electrocuted and puts on a coat.

When he steps outside of his camper, he sees Renegade - _Grayson_ \- by the fire. He is in a baggy pair of sweats and an old gray hoodie, and his hair is damp like he’s just been in the shower. He looks up at Jason steps out. “Can’t sleep?”

“Clowns will eat me,” Jason says automatically. Renegade laughs, and Jason approaches, to sit next to the fire. “How about you?”

“I never really sleep well after a mission,” he admits. Jason thinks of the man who pinned him to the camper the first time they met, as he looks at him now, at his soft face in the glow of warm firelight.

“Does everyone here know what you are?” Jason asks, and Renegade takes a moment. Looks at the fire. “Even the kids?” Jason adds.

“Everyone,” he replies, finally. “I’m not ashamed, and it funds this operation. They know I wouldn’t ever hurt anyone who works for the circus.”

It makes a lot of sense. Jason is about to say something, when Renegade speaks up first. “Talia called me. Asked me about your progress.”

“What did you tell her?” Jason asks, levelly. He wonders where the rage went; the rage that demanded justice. The one that screamed for him to demand that Bruce needed to prove that the Joker could die by his hand. The rage that made him want to burn Gotham to the ground. 

Instead that rage is dampened by the way that Renegade, that _Dick Grayson_ tends the fire. Maybe it was always like that. “I told her you weren’t ready.”

“This is stupid,” Jason says, but it feels so automatic. He doesn’t know if he means it.

“What is?” Grayson asks, looking up. “The circus? Or my lessons?”

“ _Walking the wire_ ,” Jason says, finally. “Why am I really here? What am I doing here? You’re killing people and I’m-” he stops, and he looks at Grayson, who is looking back at him with that patient, measured expression on his face. He remembers that slap. Renegade standing on his neck.

He remembers Bruce teaching him how to fight, and he remembers how kind it was. Renegade threatened him with how he learned. And then didn’t do it. 

The silence lengthens. Jason feels embarrassed; Grayson keeps looking at him. Finally he finishes the thought, but he doesn’t think the words that come out of his mouth are the ones that he meant to say, originally. “You’re the first Robin.”

Grayson’s mouth opens a little, and the smile that comes over his face is languid and slow. “Oh,” he remarks. “You figured it out. I knew you would.” He stands up, and moves closer to Jason, and finally they’re sitting on the same log. “Hi,” he says, and his eyes and bright and so blue, and the smile on his mouth reaches them. Finally. “You can call me Dick.”

Jason just stares at him. “Why am I here?”

“Because you want to be,” Dick replies, softly. “You aren’t my prisoner.” He leans over, and his head is against Jason’s shoulder, like it belongs there. 

“How did you get here?” Jason asks, turning his head. Damp hair tickles his nose; Dick smells like smoke and the cheap shampoo that they all use. Lemon and lye, he calls it. It’s the closest that anyone outside of Talia has been to him since he woke up screaming and all he could see was green and all he could feel was rage.

Dick’s hand finds Jason’s, as if this was the last barrier between them, and he holds it, like it’s something precious. “That’s a short question,” he says, “with a long answer. There’s a story you won’t like, and a story you will.”

“What part won’t I like?” Jason asks, the weight of his body comforting, the touch of his skin like a warm anchor. He hasn’t felt this whole, and when he tries to think of a time, the only time frame that comes up is _ever_. He was starved for contact. Skin to skin. That’s the only real explanation.

Dick doesn’t reply right away. Instead he starts. “What did B tell you?”

“Nothing. Alfred said you ran away.”

There’s a pause and a laugh. “Well, it’s not a lie,” Dick says, pressing his face against Jason’s bicep. “I did run away. Bruce benched me, and I ran. First I joined this school that trained thieves, sort of, but they were bad. Abusive. So I ran away again,” he explains. There’s a pause. “That’s when Slade found me. Slade said he would train me, and promised he wouldn’t bench me,” he says, looking up at the fire, now. “He really just wanted to take something from Batman. Batman’s little bird. But he did what he said he would.”

“We aren’t the same.” Jason says, but his hand tightens around Dick’s. They aren’t the same, except where they are. Renegade threatened him. But never hurt him. He could have, but he didn’t. Jason-

Jason wants to kill his replacement. Dick knew the entire time, and could have. And didn’t. Wouldn’t. Chose to train him unlike how he was trained.

“I don’t remember saying we are,” Dick says, but he doesn’t pull away. 

Jason scowls. “Why am I _really here_?”

Dick is quiet for a long time. Finally, he speaks, his voice soft. “Talia wanted me to try and get you to not go back to Gotham.”

“So you, what?”

“Gave you an impossible task,” Dick admits. “The wire. I knew you could probably master the trapeze, that you could probably figure out most of the other things the acrobats teach. But I knew you were a bigger guy. I figured I had time, if I put you on the wire.”

Jason just stares at him. 

There are a lot of things that he expects to feel. Rage is primary among them. He still has nightmares about the Joker; he still thinks about that bomb he planted on the Batmobile. He still wants Bruce to prove to him-

-he still feels _pain_. It still _hurts_. Bruce was his father; Bruce loved him. And then he _died_ and it just-

-he was _replaced_ -

-and everything still _hurts_. And here’s Dick Grayson, the original, the one that _Jason_ replaced, the one who Bruce would look for occasionally in odd, turning ways. The one whose costume was given to Jason but only in memory, because the original was in a case in the Batcave. 

And he’s saying _I distracted you to keep you away from Gotham._

And still the rage doesn’t slam into him.

Instead he just stays there, hurt, and sad, and unsure. “You said there would be a part that I didn’t like about your story. What is it?” Jason isn’t angry, but he wants to be. He wants to be angry enough to snarl, and spit, and _leave_.

Dick pauses. “I went back to Gotham once. Before I bought the circus. I saw you, and I saw B,” he says. “You were wearing my family’s colors.”

Jason didn’t know that. About Robin’s costume. It makes sense, given what he knows about this circus. “Shit,” he mutters. 

“I could have killed you. And B. It wouldn’t have been hard. I’m very good,” he points out. “But I left. I left Slade. I came out here, and I bought this circus.”

Dick was right: Jason doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like it because he hears the judgement in that, and he knows that it doesn’t matter that Dick doesn’t mean it. But still, the rage doesn’t come.

“And what? You were okay with it?”

“I know what it means to be angry with Batman, and I know what it means to be angry with Bruce Wayne,” he replies. “Jason,” he starts. “I’m the only one who knows what it means.”

Jason feels the pain bleed out of him, as surely as if Dick had shot him, and suddenly, there it is, his old friend. The rage sings. “Fuck you,” he snarls, and he gets up. The second their hands separate, he feels hungry for that touch again, but he turns, slamming his feet down and planting himself like he’s a tree. Like he’s going to fight. “Fuck you!”

Dick stands, but his hands are in the pockets of his sweats. He looks like he’s about to take a walk on the high wire, to show Jason how it’s done. “Why do you really want go back? To have Bruce disappoint you again? You think I don’t know what that feels like?” His mouth is a fine, delicate line. Jason hates him, even though he doesn’t. “He will, Jaybird.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jason argues, but even he can hear how weak it sounds. How sad. He feels like he’s on the high wire again, only this time it isn’t a few feet he’ll fall.

Dick raises his hands in some kind of supplication. “He’ll never give you what you want.”

“You don’t know what I want,” Jason snaps, but his voice is so quiet. 

Dick comes in closer. “Of course I do,” he tells him, and then, without any fear, he presses his mouth against the top of Jason’s cheek, and then puts his arms around him. “Come on, birdie.”

“He always wanted you back,” Jason argues, but he doesn’t push him away. He feels his heart hammer, and then slow. “He never stopped wanting you back.”

“He always wants what he’s lost,” Dick says. “I won’t make you stay,” he says, and the thing is that Jason knows that he probably could. “But I think you should,” he adds.

“What would I do here?” he asks, tangled in Dick’s arms, and not willing to untangle himself. 

Dick laughs. “You’re trained. I could make you better. You could be a mercenary,” he adds, as if that should be obvious. Be a mercenary, he says. With Dick. What else?

Jason wants to keep holding onto Dick, which is why Dick can lead him back into his own little camper. He keeps holding onto him while they tangle against each other, and keeps him close on his tiny cot that doesn’t really fit the both of them, unless they’re pressed close.

“An assassin,” he says.

“You don’t ever have to go back to Gotham,” Dick confirms. “We could travel with the circus.”

“Your partner will be pissed,” Jason tries, but it sounds weak.

Dick runs a hand over his shoulder, close and careful. “He won’t care. You’re my brother,” he says.

Jason wants to argue that they’re not brothers, but the truth is that no one has ever said that they’re his brother. Bruce used to hold him, when he was hurt or afraid, but no one has held him like this since he was a child. 

Jason feels his heart calm, as Dick presses their foreheads together. Jason feels himself calm, like he’s finally on the platform, on the other side.

“The Joker is still alive,” he says.

Dick is quiet. “Why does that matter?” he asks.

There are words that Jason doesn’t know how to say; that he needs Bruce to prove that he cares about him. That the only way that will happen is if he kills the Joker. That Jason doesn’t think he can do it himself. That he can forgive Bruce for almost all of it, but letting the Joker live isn’t one of those things. That Bruce replaced him. 

That Bruce replaced them both.

All that pain sits too close; the space between them doesn’t feel big enough to contain all of it. Bruce didn’t even look for Dick, and Dick is here, now. He’s flying. Gravity doesn’t contain him. 

He moved on.

So Jason says it. “He hurt me,” he says, finally. “That’s why I left.”

Dick is quiet. “Do you want me to kill him?” he asks, his mouth just against Jason’s temple.

Jason feels like his heart is open, and raw. He turns to look at Dick, who just looks back, patient. _Do you want me to kill him?_ he asks, like-

-like Jason _matters_.

“What do you want?” Dick asks, as they’re close.

Jason doesn’t answer.

He sleeps.

He doesn’t dream.

When he wakes up, daylight is filtering through the tiny camper window, weak and white. Dick is already up, and he’s untangled from Jason. He comes in through the door and offers Jason a tin mug full of dark, strong tea. “Here,” he says, gently. 

Jason takes the mug and stares at it, but then he drinks it slowly. 

They sit on Dick’s bed together for a long time. 

“I want,” Jason starts. Stops. Tries again. “I want,” he tries.

He knows what he wants. He wants someone to love him enough to kill the Joker. He wants to stop having nightmares. He wants what he knows he won’t get. 

He wants family, and here it is.

“I want to walk the high wire.”

Dick takes a moment, and smiles, and holds his hand, tight as the wire is taut.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments welcome! Tumblr over at eggsac.


End file.
